Growing hope

A coniferous sapling is plucked delicately from bare earth and brought eye level as a man inspects the shape of the root before placing it gently back in the sun warmed ground.

“The roots can’t be in a j shape, or they won’t get enough water,” he says, as he reburies the root collar in the reddish dirt.

The barren landscape is scarred by a decade old fire, and in this area, only a scattering of trees and shrubs remain.  Closer to the ground, however, planted across thousands of acres, are inches long seedlings. Fir, cedar and pine once dominated the area, and with time and careful planning, it is the hope that the scar will heal, giving way to forest once again.

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The Stanislaus National Forest has planted 493,000 trees in under three weeks this year in the Rim Fire burn scar as part of their annual Spring planting in the Groveland Ranger District of the forest.

The project began in 2016, three years after the devastating Rim Fire of 2013, which burned over 257,000 acres in the Sierra Nevada, mainly in the Stanislaus National Forest and Yosemite National Park.

“The goal is to reestablish the forest. A lot of it was high severity burn, so there’s not much left from pre–Rim Fire, so we are trying to replant the forest,” said Mimi Hoffman, the contract officer representative for the planting and a forester with the Groveland Ranger District.

This year’s planting was completed off Sawmill Road, Cherry Lake Road, the Hardin Flat area and 3N01 South.

Forest employees, mainly with the Groveland Ranger District, oversee the planting done by contractors, ensuring that the seedlings and bare roots are planted in a way that gives the young trees the best chance for survival.

“We have above ground standards and below ground standards; we don’t want the tree planted to low in the ground where the needles are buried or too high where the root collar is exposed.  We don’t want there to be what we call j root formations because the roots will run out of water and die,” explained Hoffman.

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Some of the challenges of reforesting the area, include the severity of the Rim Fire and several years of drought.

“When you have years where there is a lot of droughts, it’s hard for the trees to survive, they’ve been coddled in a nursery for the last year or so and then they’re thrown to the field where they have to adapt,” said Hoffman.

Despite the past few years of dry conditions, this year and the previous year the Sierra Nevada has seen average to above average rainfall and snowpack, which gives the tiny seedlings more than a fighting chance.

“This year we had great rain, so we’re really hoping for better establishment like last year when we had the very intense winter where a lot of the seedlings did very well,” she said.

The seedlings are harvested every summer directly from the forest, which are then sent to the Placerville Nursery in Placerville California, to grow for around a year before returning to the forest for replanting.

“We’re planting a mix of ponderosa pine, sugar pine, Douglas fir, incense cedar, and a couple of giant sequoias this year, because that is what was out here before it all burned,” said Hoffman.

Employees are planting trees instead of letting nature take its course in part due to the severity of the Rim Fire and its effects on the environment.

“Our forest is changing, and we are just trying to learn to change with it…there’s so much area burnt that there’s no trees to regenerate,” said Chris Harmon, a silviculturist technician at the Groveland Ranger District.

The planting also helps forest animals, especially some endangered species, who rely on trees for habitat, cover and food, said Hoffman.

The trees are also interdependent on each other, so the balance and diversity are key to having all species thrive.

“Some trees like to grow next to other trees. Incense cedars like to be in the shade and if all the big sugar pines and ponderosas died around the incense cedars, even though they’re super resilient, they can die quickly after a drought,” said Harmon.

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The work is far from finished after planting is over in the Spring, crews will continue to survey the fresh plants throughout the fall and years later as well.

“We do survival stocking surveys in September, October and November, so we can see if they made it the first year and then we’ll do them again in three years and again in five years,” said Hoffman

Although the work is intense and involves a lot of early mornings and late days, crews involved in the planting believe the investment into the forest and the land they love will be worth the effort in a few years.

“My last two jobs involved protecting the community from fire, and this is kind of similar because if we rebuild the forest properly, we hopefully we won’t have these big fires in the future,” said Harmon.